Note: I remember wanting to write a Twilight fanfiction since the beginning of time itself, but there was never an opportunity for it, and there was a never good enough to write with this fandom. Some of the stories I've read here have been the most eye opening ideas I've ever come across.

I feel like the Winter season always reminds me of the canon and decided to take a shot. This will be approximately twelve chapters long, and I really hope I decide to see this one to the end before the month ends.

Disclaimer: Everything but the plot and scenario are property of the author, S. Meyer.

prologue
24th December 2004

It would've been any other night, really. Ever since I moved away to college Renée pretty much pretends that her little daughter sprouted wings that took her off to a distant galaxy and while Charlie tries, Charlie is Charlie. And what's worse is that I'm not entirely too sure why this is even on my mind. I mean, the music's hot, there's definitely some hot dude who'd like to make out with a nineteen year old engineering student slash virgin, but here I am, sulking about lost causes and lost lives.

Christmas sucks, basically. You know why? There's too much to ask for, there's too much to give, and nobody gives as much they ask for, ever.

"I know, right?" his voice is pleasant, louder than the music. "Everybody's got things they want and apparently, so do I. That's irony for you."

I look at him then. He's not as pretty as he is shabby. Immediately he turns me off. My night was ruined already, and I definitely don't need an alcoholic junkie old dude on my case. I know I don't.

"Well, see any young dudes who aren't alcoholics around here?"

His accent is so off putting. And I finally realize that my jaw is doing the work my mind is supposed to be doing. How original, a blabbermouth vodka drinking virgin.

"Why do you keep saying virgin like that?"

"Because," I deliberately pause, taking in the air, the smell of the pub, the heavy dance music that's filled the night and the sincere effort that everyone's putting into being their most trashy selves. God, I stink at this scene. "Virgins don't go places."

"And tramps do?"

He's very logical to have made the assertion that the opposite of a virgin is a tramp. But then, he's old. Of course he's logical, that's all old people have in the form of that golden wisdom they store away. "I don't know. My best friend definitely is."

"Maybe she's not really worth comparing yourself to. And fucking stop calling me old. I'm twenty four, not a hundred and four." He swings his beer bottle almost a ninety degrees to his face before putting it down on the bar. "What's got you here alone?"

"I'm not alone. Jess..." I look around, searching for her red sweater that screams tramp nowhere in sight. "Is not here."

He sounds sly when he says, "Probably going places virgins don't go."

I don't respond. I mean, I don't even want to talk to people right now, let alone strange old men at bars.

"Then why is your mouth moving?"

"I think I'm drunk."

"You think?"

His accent is growing on me. I shouldn't be appreciating it as much as I am. "Did you hear that?" I check with him, turning to him, observing his brown corduroys, his grey gloves, wondering if it started snowing again.

"Hear what?"

Okay. "What's your name?"

"Masen."

I nod.

"This is the part where you tell me your name."

Another song, another red sweater passes me by, another drink gushes down my throat. I'm hoping right now that I've got the finance for these shots going down my throat. "Bella."

"Well, you're like a ball of Christmas right here, starting from that name of yours."

I snort. "Bells? Yeah, Charlie's name for me. Jake's, too."

"Who are these extremely distinguished sounding people you keep speaking of?"

"Charlie's my dad..."

"... weird to call your dad by his name."

And eventually, he's just completing all my sentences like so.

"And Jake's my ex-boyfriend..."

"... damn weird your ex called you the same thing your dad did. What'd he call you in bed?"

I look over at him pointedly.

His eyes burn hazel, green and some other kind of lemon colour before his gaze drops to his empty beer bottle. "Oh, right."

"Do you think there's a point to any of this?"

He doesn't answer me. Well, I may have been too drunk to hear him respond, until... "I don't think the point is to think about that."

I mull over what he says before answering, "Then what is the point?"

He doesn't answer this time for sure, because the ten seconds that pass feel like a good half hour.

"My parents are splitting up." He tells me. "Never thought I'd see the day Carlisle would leave good old Esme."

"You use their first names."

"I was adopted."

"Oh."

So much for my pity train.

"It isn't a bad thing. Getting adopted is great, and since my biological parents were pronounced dead I had nowhere to run to. No drama shows during my teenage years. No flitting off to the idea that my 'real' parents would've treated me better 'cause trust me, no one's got a mom like Esme.

"I'm a Cullen now." He says sadly. "Cullens are achievers. Cullens go places."

It occurs to me that he doesn't tell me about his father, but I'm so distracted by the pretty green lights that dance across his skin, the floor, the bar, it doesn't occur to me to ask. "So where did you go?" I remember him saying he's gone places. I've gone places. I've done things.

Right?

"Here. To the bar. To get a beer, and apparently talk to some chick wearing antlers on her head and drinking vodka straight up like no one's business."

I don't talk for some time. "I hate where I'm headed."

His pant leg is touching mine. I don't know how long that's been the case, but I think I don't like it. I don't like the warmth, I don't like the cosy feel of it, and I don't like how it feels familiar even though nothing about this guy is familiar. I want to tell him to move it away but he speaks before I could. "Feeling lonely and miserable?"

I nod. I feel like crying. "My parents must love me a lot, but sometimes it feels like that's just not enough."

He nods I think. I don't know. Maybe that's what he does when he doesn't reply. I don't reply either, and we just sit here wallowing in self pity, and I'm not sure whose.

Somehow I feel like the world's let me down, and I don't want to tell him that I think I wasn't ready for it, not yet, not when it was so cruel and harsh. Not when it wasn't ready for me.

"why did you go
little four-paws?
you forgot to shut
your big eyes."

I look to him, his voice serene now as he recites something under his breath, something that sounds like poetry. "You wrote that?"

"Cummings did. Thought it was appropriate."

I don't know how it was appropriate. I think I tell him so.

"Don't worry about not knowing the how. Poetry is meant to be felt right here." His hand is over his heart, as if a gesture to tell me to feel my own. I wonder how hard his heart must be beating right about now, because I can feel mine, subtle and slow, easy and gone. Almost dead, really. Almost dead. "Everything and anything that makes this beat... that's poetry for you."

I snort. "You're a romantic."

"And you're a realist. Can't say we need any more of those."

I know better than to drink more, but something is lulling me tightly towards the darkness, and my head is sloshing with the words he's told me, echoing through the walls of my imagination. "If you say so."

So the next thing I know, it's midnight, so it's officially Christmas. I feel like Scrooge right now, because I know better than to feel hopeful. There's nothing left. Not when everything's like this.

"Do you ever just remember things?" I ask him.

"All the time."

I breathe rather harshly, for one single inhalation. "My mother's lover molested me as a child."

"Not your dad?"

I shake my head. I know I do, because everything feels like it might fall to the ground as I make the move. "She cheated on Charlie from time to time he wasn't in town. I guess she's over it now, because I don't know how they made that work."

Masen doesn't say anything for a long time, longer than any of our other shared silences.

"I remembered this while I was putting up Christmas decorations. I don't know, I saw a red velvet Christmas hat and held it in my hands and one thing led to another and I just... remembered."

No awkward silence follows, though none of our silences thus far were awkward. "Are you going to tell your mom?"

I think about it again, as I have been since last night, when Jess tried to snap me out of it but nothing could snap away what I'd remembered. "It would kill Charlie. It would kill them."

"There's no need to care about what would kill them."

I'm going to fall asleep. I know I am. Everything's closing, and my eyes are, too. "I have to care about what would kill them."

I don't know what he says, but I just die out hoping that he's not another Phil. I don't think he is, because I don't think I'm that stupid or that bad a judge of character.

"Merry Christmas, Bella." He says, his voice low, and the last thing I remember.